About the Authors

Kyoko Ueda

Affiliation Department of Virology, Institute of Biomedical & Health Sciences, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

Ryoko Kawabata

Affiliation Department of Virology, Institute of Biomedical & Health Sciences, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

Takashi Irie

Affiliation Department of Virology, Institute of Biomedical & Health Sciences, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

Yoshiaki Nakai

Affiliation Altan Corporation, Tokyo, Japan

Yukinobu Tohya

Affiliation Department of Veterinary Medicine, College of Biosource Sciences, Nihon University, Kanagawa, Japan

Takemasa Sakaguchi

tsaka@hiroshima-u.ac.jp

Affiliation Department of Virology, Institute of Biomedical & Health Sciences, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

Competing Interests

YN is an employee of the Altan Corporation, which manufactures and sells disinfectants containing persimmon extracts. TS conducted joint research to evaluate anti-viral activity of various reagents and obtained financial support from the Altan Corporation. A patent containing a part of this work is under application [2008-201841 (Japan), PCT/JP2009/056635] and TS is one of the inventors of the patent. There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: TS YN. Performed the experiments: KU RK. Analyzed the data: KU RK TS YN. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: TI YT. Wrote the paper: TS TI.